Sex icon? I've just piled on 20 pounds! Kim Cattrall says she'll do ANYTHING to leave Sex and The City behind

When Kim Cattrall was a 17-year-old innocent in Hollywood, making her debut in a film called Rosebud, she was called to one side by the director, Otto Preminger and told she reminded him of Marilyn Monroe.

Then came the punchline. ‘Not in your looks, of course, but in your lack of talent’, he said, and strode away.

For the devastated Cattrall, it was a career-defining moment — although he had intended to fatally wound rather than provide her with helpful advice.

Poles apart: Kim Cattrall in Meet Monica Velour, in which she plays a former star of adult movies who is reduced to dancing in a sleazy strip club

‘Actually, he was right,’ she says now. ‘I was terribly naïve and not at all glamorous, with wild hair, scruffy jeans, and no make-up. It dawned on me that my looks were going to be every bit as important as my acting ability. It made me realise that maybe I needed to dress up a bit.’

This paid off years later when, at 41, she was to win one of the most glamorous roles on offer and make her name, and fortune, as the man-eating New Yorker Samantha Jones in Sex And The City.

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But this was only after building up an acting cv that would have put the long-dead Preminger’s ridicule to shame.

It was still, however, a huge challenge when she was offered her latest role, as a bloated, ageing, former star of adult movies, whose looks have gone west, and bosom has dropped south, lives in a haze of drink and drugs in a trailer park, and is reduced to dancing in a sleazy strip club where the customers call her grandma.

The Sex and the City girls: Cattrall played man-eater Samantha Jones

Meet Monica Velour is a far cry from Sex And The City. ‘I had to think about it long and hard,’ she says. ‘Then I thought, “I’m not interested in being a sex icon for ever”. So I uglied down .

‘I had to put on 20lb for the role and I loved it. I ate rubbish meals and McDonald’s and chips and puddings and just everything. I got a spare tyre round the middle and wore clothes to match.

Now she’s back to her glamorous self. Sitting in a Soho hotel suite she is back to her normal weight, but is still curvaceous and wears a dress that fits like a glove. Her make-up is restrained and complements a face untainted by either botox or surgery.

Kim Cattrall has a career defining moment when a director said she reminded him of Marilyn Monroe for her 'lack of talent'

What is refreshing is that, unlike her co-star and great rival in SATC, Sarah Jessica Parker, she is not a slave to her appearance.

She seems comfortable in her skin — and she would need to be to play Monica.

‘When I filmed the first strip scene, I was surrounded by proper dancers, as extras,’ says Cattrall. ‘They’d all looked after their bodies, they knew how to move, and it made the contrast with me all the more obvious.

‘Part of the scene was all the jeering Monica had to put up with. By the end, I fled to my dressing room and cried my eyes out. I’m not made of stone.’

After years of making films that didn’t set the world alight, when she was offered Sex and The City, she still turned it down three times.

Kim Cattrall says she is not interested in turning herself into a Barbie doll and trying to compete with younger actresses

‘I started reading the original book by Candace Bushnell, and I threw it across the room. I found it so depressing — about women who are ready and men who are running,’ says Cattrall. ‘I thought, “How can they make a series of half-hour programmes about this? And make it comedy, too?”

‘So I kept saying no until a friend asked me to meet Darren Star, the show’s writer and producer, as a favour.

‘He persuaded me to at least have a screen test. They had already hired someone else to play Samantha Jones, but they let her go when I signed up.

‘I don’t have any regrets. Samantha gave me a life after 40. She was so powerful, so positive.’

She adds: ‘Sex And The City has given me the financial security to do films like Meet Monica Velour. Early on in my career when I did a film called Tribute with Jack Lemon, I asked him: “How do you have longevity in this business?”

‘He said: “You take risks.”

And no one can doubt that taking on the role of the multi-layered Monica was one of those risks. To her credit, Cattrall succeeds beyond expectation.

‘The most difficult thing was to find Monica’s dignity,’ she says. ‘She smokes she drinks; she’s from the South, so the voice had to be huskier than mine.

‘I eventually found a masseuse who had just the right voice. I was paying her $250 a week just to listen to her speak!’

Like many of the women she has played she is tough, independent, and supremely confident. She has been divorced twice and had another marriage annulled but says she considers divorce not a detriment but an action taken by an independent woman, one who decided to have a career instead of children.

Cattrall is comfortable in her skin and wants to follow the likes of Helen Mirren who aren't afraid of playing their age

But she does not shy away from the actuality of her profession. ‘The highs are great but the lows are: Can I pay my rent or not? Am I good enough? Am I pretty enough, smart enough, young enough?’ says Cattrall.

She won’t, however, try to compete with younger actresses by going in for the obligatory expensive uplifts.

‘I am not interested in being a Barbie doll and turning myself into a sausage for the next 20 years. I want to follow actresses like Helen Mirren and Judi Dench who have lines on their faces and aren’t afraid of playing their age.’

She adds: ‘Me saying yes to Monica got it made and that made me extremely happy. And I will keep going for as long as possible. That would be great.’

Meet Monica Velour is out now on DVD.

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Kim Cattrall: Leaves Sex and The City behind for new film Monica Velour